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Background: Increasingly, strength-based approaches to health and wellbeing interventions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are being explored. This is a welcome counter to deficit-based initiatives which can represent a non-Indigenous view of outcomes of interest. However, the evidence base is not well developed. This paper presents the protocol for evaluating a strengths-based initiative which provides life coaching services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community housing tenants. The study aims to evaluate the effect of life coaching on social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) of tenants in three Victorian regions.Methods: The More Than a Landlord (MTAL) study is a prospective cohort study of Aboriginal Housing Victoria tenants aged 16 years and over that embeds the evaluation of a life coaching program. All tenant holders in one metropolitan and two regional areas of Victoria are invited to participate in a survey of SEWB, containing items consistent with key categories of SEWB as understood and defined by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and key demographics, administered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peer researchers at baseline, 6 and 18 months. Survey participants are then invited to participate in strengths based life coaching, using the GROW model, for a duration of up to 18 months. Indigenous life coaches provide tenants with structured support in identifying and making progress towards their goals and aspirations, rather than needs. The study aims to recruit a minimum of 200 survey participants of which it is anticipated that approximately 73% will agree to life coaching.Discussion: The MTAL study is a response to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and organisational requests to build the evidence base for an initiative originally developed and piloted within an Aboriginal controlled organisation. The study design aligns with key principles for research in Indigenous communities in promoting control, decision making and capacity building. The MTAL study will provide essential evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of strengths-based initiatives in promoting SEWB in these communities and provide new evidence about the relationship between strengths, resilience, self-determination and wellbeing outcomes.Trial Registration: This trial was retrospectively registered with the ISRCTN Register on the 12/7/21 with the study ID: ISRCTN33665735 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Return to work (RTW) is important for recovery post-injury. Fear of (re)injury is a strong predictor of delayed RTW, and therefore much attention has been given to addressing injured workers' fear beliefs. However, RTW is a socially-negotiated process and it may be important to consider the wider social context of the injured worker, including the beliefs of the key people involved in their RTW journey.Methods: This paper involves data collected as part of a wider study in which semi-structured interviews explored RTW from the perspectives of 93 key stakeholders: injured workers, GPs, employers and insurance case managers in Victoria, Australia. Inductive analysis of interview transcripts identified fear of (re)injury as a salient theme across all stakeholder groups. This presented an opportunity to analyse how the wider social context of the injured worker may influence fear and avoidance behaviour. Two co-authors performed inductive analysis of the theme 'fear of (re)injury'. Codes identified in the data were grouped into five categories. Between and within category analysis revealed three themes describing the contextual factors that may influence fear avoidance and RTW behaviour.Results: Theme one described how injured workers engaged in a process of weighing up the risk of (re)injury in the workplace against the perceived benefits of RTW. Theme two described how workplace factors could influence an injured workers' perception of the risk of (re)injury in the workplace, including confidence that the source of the injury had been addressed, the availability and suitability of alternative duties. Theme three described other stakeholders' reluctance to accept injured workers back at work because of the fear that they might reinjure themselves.Conclusions: Our findings illustrate the need for a contextualised perspective of fear avoidance and RTW behaviour that includes the beliefs of other important people surrounding the injured worker (e.g. employers, family members, GPs). Existing models of health behaviour such as The Health Beliefs Model may provide useful frameworks for interventions targeting the affective, cognitive, social, organisational and policy factors that can influence fear avoidance or facilitate RTW following injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Insufficient sleep is potentially an important modifiable risk factor for obesity and poor physical activity and sedentary behaviours among children. However, inconsistencies across studies highlight the need for more objective measures. This paper examines the relationship between sleep duration and objectively measured physical activity, sedentary time and weight status, among a sample of Victorian Primary School children.Methods: A sub-sample of 298 grades four (n = 157) and six (n = 132) Victorian primary school children (aged 9.2-13.2 years) with complete accelerometry and anthropometry data, from 39 schools, were taken from a pilot study of a larger state based cluster randomized control trial in 2013. Data comprised: researcher measured height and weight; accelerometry derived physical activity and sedentary time; and self-reported sleep duration and hypothesised confounding factors (e.g. age, gender and environmental factors).Results: Compared with sufficient sleepers (67 %), those with insufficient sleep (<10 hrs/day) were significantly more likely to be overweight (OR 1.97, 95 % CI:1.11-3.48) or obese (OR 2.43, 95 % CI:1.26-4.71). No association between sleep and objectively measured physical activity levels or sedentary time was found.Conclusion: The strong positive relationship between weight status and sleep deprivation merits further research though PA and sedentary time do not seem to be involved in the relationship. Strategies to improve sleep duration may help obesity prevention initiatives in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]